Phishing 101: Beware and Prepare this Holiday Season

What Is a Phishing Attack?

A phishing attack is when an outside attacker attempts to gain information from someone by claiming to be something else. A classic example would be when an attacker sends an email claiming to be from your bank, and links to a spoofed website asking for personal details. Sometimes this is obvious, with a poorly made website or typos everywhere, but other times it can be almost impossible to tell by just looking at the page. It's important to keep an eye out as to what website you are actually at and what information it is asking for.

With the holiday shopping season upon us, the FBI is warning consumers to be on the lookout for cyber scams and phishing attacks. Why such concern? According to research, phishing remains a popular and surprisingly effective attack method — in fact, 23 percent of recipients open phishing messages and 11 percent click on attachments.

Unfortunately, phishing campaigns come in many different shapes and sizes. While some are obvious and indiscriminate, luring only the most susceptible of victims (like that long-lost uncle who just needs your routing number to give you $100,000), others are more poised and targeted, only interested in targeting those with big bank accounts or holders of confidential company documents.

In this slideshow, Jon French, security analyst, AppRiver, breaks down what consumers and organizations need to know about phishing scams in order to protect themselves and their networks, this holiday season and beyond.

To protect the company from those insiders who abuse their privileged access and from hackers with stolen credentials, many companies are turning to a privileged access management (PAM) solution. ... More >>